Dirty Page 2 Normalized
Helen: [00:00:00] Okay, should I just crack on?
Chris: Woo. Yeah, let’s crack on.
Chris: Welcome to The Dirty Page.
Helen: Hello and welcome to our second episode of The Dirty Page. I’m Helen.
Chris: And I’m Chris. We’re two home cooks who’ll be chatting about food and life through examining the dirty pages of our cookbooks. Yes,
Helen: indeed. Like everyone, we all have those most used recipes, but why did they come about? How have our favorites even changed or evolved over the years?
Helen: So this is exactly what we’re here to chat about.
Chris: That’s absolutely right. And we want to say thank you to everyone who listened to our first episode. We did have a few sound issues, but hopefully we’re a bit louder today. Please, please rate and review our pod in the [00:01:00] places that you find it. And most importantly, let us know your Dirty Pages.
Helen: Yes, absolutely. You can reach us via our email, which is hello at thedirtypage. com or via our Instas where we are. Dirty page pod. I’m pretty pleased that the reel of the omelette from our last episode has reached quite a few people. So I’m obviously getting those video editing skills down. So I’m feeling a bit more relevant.
Chris: Yeah. You’re getting down with the kids, aren’t you? Absolutely.
Helen: Yeah. I mean, I’m a very much an old school Twitter user. So this whole sort of coming into like dealing with pictures and sound and text is like, Oh, no.
Chris: What we’ll get you on the, we’ll get you on the TikTok soon. Don’t worry.
Helen: Oh, that, oh no.
Helen: Alright, . It’s okay.
Chris: So how are you Helen?
Helen: I am to put the food, relevant term cream crackered , I yeah, I, I’ve just come [00:02:00] up a pretty hectic time at work. But I don’t know. It, it’s, it’s, it was part of a big project that’d been. Building up for, for about six years and it’s done. Well, mostly there’s always things to tie up.
Helen: So I’m in a sort of recovery phase, let’s say. And one of the things I like to do during recovery phases is to cook up a bit because you’re like, when you’re really busy, you like, you think of food more as fuel rather than. As something joyful, you’re like, I just need to get something fuel-y into me.
Helen: So it’s nice to get back to sort of more joyful cooking. And had a big cook up last weekend. Had a visitor and made them a cake. Made my favourite Malteser cake, which will probably come up in a pod later on. I also I, and Chris, you’ll probably be aware of this. I’ve been attempting to make marmalade for a number of years and to put it mildly, I’ve had a viscosity problem.
Helen: I [00:03:00] couldn’t get the damn thing to set. So this time I used half the water that the recipe needed and I dumped a load of that jam setter stuff in, you know, like. the stuff with pectin. And it worked. It’s pretty rock solid. I don’t think it would pass a CWA inspection, but I have made marmalade. So I, that’s my big achievement for the week, I guess.
Helen: So how are things with you, Chris? What’s cooking?
Chris: Well, I haven’t been cooking a lot this week cause I’ve mostly been away on a work trip, but at the start of the week, I had my family over and Managed to do a Twitch stream with my dad, which was fun. Yep, had to teach him all the things about, you know, being recorded on video, and where you stand and all that sort of thing.
Chris: So that, that was a lot of fun.
Helen: Was it good to have his insight? Cause your dad’s a [00:04:00] former chef, isn’t he?
Chris: Yeah, particularly a pastry chef. So what we made was a… Pear and Mascarpone Danish, and it was absolutely gorgeous. But certainly to have him talking more about, you know, why you do this thing as opposed to this is what you do, which is what you normally get from recipes.
Chris: You know, you’re getting more of that. Professional insight of, oh, well, you’d laminate it so that you have all these layers and so that this does happen and it was really cool seeing him interact with the chat who had some really interesting questions, like, why doesn’t it all just merge into one?
Chris: Yeah, This is it.
Chris: But no, it was, it was a lot of fun. And we still have. Half a ball of pastry in the freezer. So, more, more Danish coming soon. Is it sweet pastry? Or can you do other things? [00:05:00] So, this is the beauty of it. That particular pastry can be used either sweet or savory. So, the sweetness goes in the filling or on top of the…
Chris: the pastry itself so you can put like a sugar topping of some sort or something like that and that can enhance the sweetness of it. So it’s one of those lovely pastries where you can do anything with it.
Helen: Oh, as we said, one of my favorite danishes that I’ve had recently was from so I live up in the Blue Mountains of Sydney and we have a bakery up here called the Black Cockatoo Bakery and I think I visited them and it was a, it was like a potato and cheese and sage danish and it was Absolutely delicious.
Helen: They’re one of these bakeries that sort of do things sort of very seasonal what they have So it’s sort of not one you can go back and get all the time, but that lives rent free in my head [00:06:00] I have
Chris: to say anything be it pizza or pies or Danishes, anything that has potato in it is always a winner for me, like particularly anything that’s potato and cheese.
Chris: I know it’s double carbs, I don’t care, but no, no, it’s not a problem. It is delicious and I love it.
Helen: Actually, talking about potatoes I had a jacket potato for my dinner last night. Now, this is a thing that we used to have all the time growing up, and I just sort of never have jacket potatoes anymore.
Helen: Just because they take a long time in the oven and things because I want to do them properly. My parents used to just put them in the microwave and it was always a bit disappointing. Sorry mom, if you’re listening. Hello to the mothers. Yeah, hello mums. But Yeah, [00:07:00] we made a jacket potato last night and just that simple thing of a really You know fluffy jacket potato with just like oh gosh I think as i’m getting older i’m appreciating those Really simple flavors and comfort flavors a lot more.
Helen: So,
Chris: yeah, it’s funny that you mentioned simple foods. So I mentioned that I was on a work trip this week, and that involved me flying to Brisbane. And about, I want to say two thirds through the flight. We had an interesting happenstance where lightning hit the plane.
Helen: Oh,
Chris: gosh. Oh. And, and this made me think about if something had gone wrong and everything was fine, for the record, I want to preface that everything was fine and we are still talking and everything is good.
Chris: Especially
Helen: if mum is listening. I’m [00:08:00] fine,
Chris: mum. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, but it just struck my mind that the last thing I had had for, to eat, if anything had gone wrong, was buttered toast, and that was it. If anything had gone wrong, my last meal would have been buttered toast, and I’m like, that’s not a great way to go out.
Helen: I don’t know. No one should always eat as if it’s your last meal. I think that’s, that’s… That’s a predication for, for at least because all of my meals would involve lots of butter then.
Chris: Yeah, I’d have to start walking twice as much, wouldn’t I?
Helen: I love that your life flashed before your eyes, but specifically what I last ate flashed before your
Chris: eyes. I mean, it was very early in the morning, so not a lot had happened that morning, so [00:09:00] of course the last thing I thought about was, Oh God, what did I just eat?
Helen: Well, I’m very glad to know that you’re, you’re okay. Yeah, there’s all sorts of things and it’s, I suppose it’s part of life is to have these sorts of thoughts and things sometimes. It’s interesting.
Helen: I think probably now is a good time to introduce today’s theme. And actually I think it segues really nicely with that talk of simple food. So what is today’s theme, Chris? Well,
Chris: it is a bit of a, it is a bit of a dichotomy to this episode’s theme, given our different life experiences.
Helen: Mm hmm. Yeah.
Helen: Yes. So I came up with this idea of we should feature student cookbooks, which, you know, is quite a big genre and things. But of course, there is a bit of privilege in saying that because I went through a very traditional, not traditional, but I went [00:10:00] through a university path. In fact, I was one of those people who didn’t leave university when traditionally you would.
Helen: you would do. So student cookbooks were quite a big thing for me, but of course, not everybody goes to university. Chris, you had a very different route.
Chris: Yeah, I had a, I had a very different route. From, from when I left school, I was mostly just working and I, Managed to go up into the corporate world through that.
Chris: So, you know, when I left home, I, I didn’t have the student cookbooks, but I did have one cookbook that that did actually help me. And that was a cookbook called like grandma used to make, which was given to me by my grandma. And yeah, it was the one cookbook I took with me when I left home. So, you know, yes, I had my ideal way of making stir fries, which is pretty much what I survived on.
Chris: But when I wanted to make something a little bit [00:11:00] more fancy, I would use this cookbook to do that that has lots of lovely. Traditional recipes in it as well, which is nice.
Helen: So how old is it as a cookbook and who, who, who wrote it?
Chris: Well, this is an old, and it’s going to say a lot about the Australian way of life, but this is a Reader’s Digest cookbook.
Chris: Oh, wonderful. And it was first published in 2002. Okay. And I would have got it about 2003, I think. So, yeah. And this was published by Reader’s Digest Australia. So yeah. And this is an actual Australian version as opposed to, because I know they have Reader’s Digest in America and a couple of other places.
Chris: But, yeah, this was one definitely done in the Australian mindset, which is lovely. It’s got all sorts of, you [00:12:00] know, because it’s from the Australian point of view and it’s in the early thousands. So it is very much skewed more towards the English style of cooking. But, you know, it’s got some really lovely things like pears in red wine, lemon meringue pie oh my god, Victorian vegetable salad, which basically looks like someone has just layered salad in a bowl and then tipped it over.
Chris: Oh,
Helen: like as in actual salad vegetables or like?
Chris: Yeah, it’s salad vegetables. So there’s like a layer of tomato, a layer of cucumber, a layer of, I want to say carrot and then beetroot and then cauliflower, but they’ve put it in a bowl and let it sit. And then they’ve turned it over
Helen: as in like they’ve let it set in something or they’ve just let it like settle and
Chris: settle [00:13:00] basically.
Chris: Upside down, so it looks lovely. It’s not quite
Helen: like one of those things like that, which I could never understand. Yeah, no, luckily, or a
Chris: terrine. I’ve seen people do vegetable terrines. I’m like, please no.
Helen: Yeah, that’s just, I find that a little bit odd. So, so yes,
Chris: Welsh onion cake.
Helen: Ooh, that actually sounds quite nice.
Chris: It does. It’s basically potato, scallop potatoes without the cream.
Helen: Can’t go wrong. No. Yum, yum, yum, yum. So, you’ve got a few dirty pages in this?
Chris: I do have a couple of dirty pages in this. Both of them desserts, actually.
Chris: So, the one that I’m not talking about today would be golden syrup dumplings. Ooh.
Helen: Ooh. Yeah. .
Chris: I thought that might trigger something. [00:14:00] Yeah. Oh
Helen: gosh. That’s giving me a sort of warmness, ,
Chris: a dumpling. And the, the first recipe I made from this was actually ginger beer, so homemade ginger beer. Which was absolutely lovely and that was, that was great cause Nan gave me a whole heap of ideas of how she would do ginger beer when she was doing ginger beer as well.
Chris: So that gave us a bit to talk about, which was lovely. But there’s one particular page and I’m going to talk about this. This is the recipe. And. When I tried to find it a couple, a couple of months ago I couldn’t find the page. And the reason is the page was stuck together.
Chris: This is definitely a dirty page because you don’t get a stuck together page any other way. It’s a sticky page to the point where there’s [00:15:00] crumbs and things in the, in the fold of the page.
Helen: That’s amazing. I need a photo. I need a
Chris: photo. Oh, you’ll get a photo. Don’t you worry.
Helen: Look out everyone for the insta’s.
Helen: We’ll get a photo of this.
Chris: This is the lemon delicious pudding. It is so good. So for those who don’t know lemon delicious pudding is basically a very soft sponge, which is it’s not even, well it is baked, but it’s baked in a bain marie. So, a bain marie, for those who don’t know, is where you put you’ll put your baking dish in a roasting tin, and you’ll fill that roasting tin with boiling water.
Chris: And this does two things. It makes it nice and moist. Both in the oven and around the around the dish that [00:16:00] you’ve put it in. So it fills the oven with moisture, but it also keeps the temperature of the baking dish constant.
Chris: Yeah, so it But basically Lemon Delicious Pudding it’s moist, it’s lemony, it’s very saucy, and it’s delicious. So is it quite a sort of simple… or…
Helen: Yeah, no, I’m giggling over the sauce in this. So it’s quite a simple spongy type thing, like, you know, butter, marg, sugar, flour. Yeah, so… How are the lemons involved?
Chris: Yeah so basically you’ve got your butter, your sugar two teaspoons of finely grated lemon rind three eggs separated Quarter cup of self raising flour, a cup of milk, quarter cup of strained [00:17:00] lemon juice, icing sugar for sifting on top, of course. Oh, and this is very, this is very British. Rose petals to decorate optional.
Chris: Oh,
Helen: very, very traditional.
Chris: Isn’t it? Isn’t it? So, it’s really simple. Basically, you beat in your egg yolks to the butter, sugar, lemon, which you’ll have beaten together until light and fluffy and almost white. Beat in the egg yolks, fold in the flour, and gently mix in the milk and lemon juice. Then you whisk the egg whites until they hold soft peaks and you fold carefully into the mixture and then you just spoon your You mix your mixture into prepared dishes.
Chris: I normally only do one dish because I, I can’t be bothered to be that fancy to do individual
Chris: dishes.
Helen: Oh, so normally it would be like individual, like little ramekin [00:18:00] dishes that you put in the, the Baine-Marie type thing.
Chris: Yeah, absolutely. So like you do a a creme caramel or, or panna cotta or that sort of thing.
Chris: You’d do it into individual ramekins. But I just do it into one nice big rectangular baking dish. Do it that way. And then, you know, bake it for an hour. And then obviously test with a skewer after an hour. If it’s nice and clean when it comes out, then your cake is cooked. And then you sift icing sugar over the top and serve hot or warm.
Chris: And pouring cream, it suggests. Oh,
Helen: yes. Excellent. Excellent. Now, this does sound like, how many lemons would this need? Because I should say that it sounds like I need this recipe in my life. Because just pulled the lemons off our tree and we’ve got a bit of a glut, which, [00:19:00] hence the marmalade making.
Chris: I will, I will gladly take a bag of lemons. But this, this would probably only use about one lemon. Okay. I would say. Yeah, it’s, it’s.
Helen: That’s my problem with the glut of lemons is most recipes would only use one. And it’s like, what do you do when you’re 40?
Chris: I mean, this is when you make lemon curd, Helen.
Helen: I’m not a lemon curd fan.
Chris: Oh dear. Really? Really?
Helen: Yeah, I’m not a big fan. Yeah. Oh no,
Helen: I know.
Chris: See, see, I just finally perfected lemon curd for me. ’cause like your Marmalade story earlier. I’ve been making lemon curd for years and trying to get it right, but always not setting it properly. And I’ve finally found one that worked and yeah.
Chris: I’ve just been so happy, and I love lemon curd now, I’m having it on toast, on English [00:20:00] muffins, on crumpets, on everything. So it’s alright, I’ll eat the lemon curd for you, it’s fine.
Helen: Okay, I will I will deliver lemons to
Helen: you. Through a lemon exchange.
Chris: Yeah, yeah, we can do that. That’s absolutely fine. Any more thoughts on lemon delicious pudding?
Helen: Oh, it just sounds, it sounds a good old traditional thing and, and it just sounds a lovely first cookbook I suppose that your grandmother maybe gave it to you to sort of like, oh, you’re leaving home now, but this is how you can like still have some of the homely recipes that you’re used to.
Chris: Yeah. And I think it was also to go, oh, these, these are really nice things that I’ve eaten and You should try them sort of thing. Oh, this is traditional cooking. Possibly with a slight racist undertone to that, but it’s fine.
Helen: Well, it is traditional, but yeah. Yeah.
Chris: Yeah. [00:21:00] But but no, I, I really love this book and, you know, it was one of the last gifts my grandmother was able to give me.
Chris: And it’s something that I really enjoy cooking from. So, yeah. Awesome. So that’s the Lemon Delicious Pudding. But Helen, your recipe sounds delicious from an entirely different point of view. How can warm chocolate cookies… Be husband attracting.
Helen: Yes, this is this is the story of how I almost ended up with two husbands rather than one.
Helen: So… So
Helen: as I mentioned, so just to give an intro about the book and things. As I mentioned before, I spent quite a long time at university. I remember, like, moving university to do my graduate studies and my dad going, So, like… What job are you going to get after this? Because I was off to do a PhD in high pressure physics.
Helen: And I was like, I [00:22:00] don’t know, Dad. It’ll be a fun job. And he was a bit like, Hmm.
Chris: So, yeah. These newfangled kids and their newfangled jobs that don’t exist.
Helen: I know, I know. And will it bring the price of petrol down? That was always Dad’s thoughts. I know. So I’ve had quite a few student cookbooks. I used to really love them when I first started out as an adult because, you know, this genre, they often have like, you know, a list of basics of like, you know, what sort of utensils you need.
Helen: They usually have like a… an introductory chapter about, you know, how to do basic things like cook eggs and stuff like this. They also like, often have a list of like you know, store cupboard staples and things like this and, and how to basically save yourself a bit of money. Because I think one of the big problems when you first become independent and things like this.
Helen: It’s, it’s quite easy to spend a lot on [00:23:00] food. And it doesn’t, it, it takes a bit of time and ideas and inspiration sometimes to, to make equally delicious food, but not pay as much. And,
Chris: particularly when you don’t have that much money coming in,
Helen: right. Exactly, exactly. This is the time in your life where you, you have to be a little bit careful with what you’re buying and, you know, you want to make sure you’re having nutritious food.
Helen: But you know, and especially right now with the cost of living, I think these sorts of cookbooks are still. Really useful. And I suppose the testament is I still use this, these cookbooks. So the one that I’m featuring today and we’re talking about today is called Beyond Baked Beans, and it’s called Real Food for Students.
Helen: And it’s by a woman called Fiona Beckett. It’s actually published in 2003, so I should say I, this, this is what I would describe as a graduate student cookbook. Okay, cool. It’s, it’s a little bit more fancy in some of the [00:24:00] ingredients and stuff than an undergraduate cookbook. I, I always just thought that was kind of funny, like she, she, some of the things she asked for, like, you know, cans of coconut milk and stuff, which I think as an undergraduate, I’d be like, Oh, I cannot afford this.
Helen: But as a postgraduate, I should say I was lucky. I got a nice bit of scholarship to do my PhD. So That enabled me to buy the odd can of coconut milk. So that was pretty good. So yeah, so this book has a number of dirty pages. One that I, I’ve got, and I’m gonna use my sticky notes to find the dirty pages there’s not sticky pages, although there are actually some pages in this that are nearly. I think that’s a really lovely concept of it’s so dirty that it’s stuck together and you can’t find it. Yeah. Right.
Helen: Yeah. I love it.
Helen: But, yeah, she has I like the way she’s done her chapters. There’s one, there’s like a whole chapter that’s…
Helen: called fuel and it’s literally like, you know, really like, you know, fuely food. That’s a bit about [00:25:00] making yourself feel better and stuff. And in there we use this a lot now. She has a recipe called amazing Marmite gravy. And I should say. One of the things I’ve struggled with when I moved here from the UK was that we have gravy granules in the UK called Bisto.
Helen: And what do you have here? It’s called Gravelox or Gravelox? Gravox.
Chris: Gravox.
Helen: It’s disgusting. I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Australia, but Gravox is disgusting.
Chris: And we’re going to get emails about that.
Helen: I know, but that’s okay. It’s okay. I’m allowed to have opinions.
Helen: Bisto actually is actually quite good. So I miss that. You know, basically I could never faff with making proper gravy. So this has been a good substitute. And it works really well with Vegemite. And it’s literally just butter, flour, and a spoonful of… Marmite or Vegemite, and then you, you make a like roux with that, and [00:26:00] then you put boiling water, well you dissolve the marmite in the boiling water, you make your roux with the butter and the, the plain flour, and then you add the, the gravy.
Helen: The, the Marmite stock to that, and then you whip it up. So it’s, it’s, you know, you always have that in, well, I usually have Marmite or Vegemite in the cupboard. So that’s pretty good. My other dirty page. And actually this, this does really cement that this is a graduate cookbook. I would say it’s called Keralin style prawn curry with mussels, coconut and coriander, you know, so this is not something that.
Helen: I would have thought an undergraduate could afford, but there you go. I
Helen: mean,
Helen: it’s mainly, it does use like frozen mussels and frozen prawns. Right. We use this a lot. We don’t put the mussels in because my other half doesn’t really like mussels. But we make this like very [00:27:00] often now and it’s sort of a, a really nice coconutty coconut milk base.
Helen: It’s got turmeric in it. Sorry, I absolutely love turmeric. I love the flavour and the colour of it. So, yeah. But that’s not the recipe I was going to talk about. And obviously I’ve teased you all. So the recipe I’m going to talk about is warm chocolate chip cookies. It’s a very basic cookie recipe, actually.
Helen: Sort of, very, sort of, butter, nice butter, brown sugar brown sugar and caster sugar mixture one egg a bit of flour, and in theory she, she says luxury dark. Belgian chocolate, but in reality, use whatever chocolate
Helen: you can
Helen: get in a book. Student cookbook! I know, exactly! As I say, it’s a great book, it’s got lots of like, basics, and the lists of things you want to do, and things like this, but this is why I’ve always called it a graduate cookbook.
Helen: Rather than an undergraduate student cookbook. But [00:28:00] anyway, so, the story behind these was that so I got this book just before I moved up to Edinburgh. To start my PhD and I moved up to Edinburgh, determined to be quite single and to enjoy myself. But within a month I had met somebody who, who’s still around.
Helen: They are lovely.
Helen: My other half. And I, I had made this, I made this recipe for him quite early on. Made it as a pudding because it’s quite simple. You always get leftovers, which is really nice. And serving them warm with ice cream is just, ah, it’s just the bomb. It’s just amazing. So I made this a couple of times and he was obviously, you know, the old adage that the way to a man’s heart is definitely through their stomach seemed to be really working in this case.
Helen: But I, there was a time where I, I ran the Edinburgh 10K and Andy had run it too. So Andy’s my other half, but his best friend, [00:29:00] Chris, he’s also called Chris had run it and come over. Like, so basically we’d all run this 10K and then they came over some for some food. And I made, I think I had some leftover cookies.
Helen: I don’t think I made them fresh. So I warmed them up and had them with ice cream and yeah, so I think Chris, the, the, the Chris of the, the tale sort of was a bit weird with me afterwards and stuff like this and Andy like was like, oh, I think, and then later on he said to me, he said like, I think you’ve got to be careful there.
Helen: Helen. I’m like, why? I said, Oh, I think Chris might want to steal you from me because of these cookies.
Helen: So this is how I almost ended up with two Scotsmans rather than just the one. And I should say that Chris is very happy together and has two very beautiful daughters with his lovely partner, Michelle. And Chris was the best man at our wedding. But it’s I [00:30:00] think it’s a nice testament of how something very simple and every time I make these Andy sort of quips, Oh, you’re trying to attract another husband now.
Helen: I just want to keep the one I’ve got.
Chris: So he’s got that, he’s got that book under lock and key so it can only ever be made for him. Yeah,
Helen: I think I’ve made them for you and your other half, actually. I wouldn’t be surprised if I haven’t. Probably, probably. It’s a very simple cookie recipe, but it’s just the concept, it’s that idea again of the simple foods, right?
Helen: Sometimes, absolutely, you want to go all out sometimes and have really fancy food and things, but sometimes just having fun. Those absolutely simple things and then the little touches like the cookies being warm and then the ice cream being cold, you know, those little contrasts and [00:31:00] things can make, oh,
Chris: make everything so good.
Chris: Yeah, there is absolutely nothing better than a warm, moist Chocolate cookie like I love it. so much. I can’t explain it any more than that. That’s probably going to become a clip of some sort. I, I just can’t explain it any further than that. The warmth. which creates the moisture of the cookie. It’s just gorgeous.
Chris: The oozy chocolate, which is beautiful. It’s why I like brownies so much as well.
Helen: Yeah. Oh, see, I like brownies, but oh gosh, they’re, they’re so they’re so Bad for you? Well, no, they’re good but bad. They’re good in moderation, like everything. Just to cement the fact that this is definitely a gradual cookbook.
Helen: And another reason I love it so much, it actually has a chapter on wine at the end. , , like, you know, the best stu, the best [00:32:00] like wine for under four pounds, which is like $8, which gosh dates this a little bit. And And, and then, like, a little chapter about bargain bottles of booze and, and basic cocktails and stuff, so, it’s, yeah, it’s definitely a, a bougie student cookbook, to say the least.
Helen: But it’s one that, as a result, I still need to go. It got me a husband, yeah, exactly, so. Big bargain. Thanks, mum. I think my mum bought me, because I think my other sister had the Beyond Baked Beans Vegetarian. She did a vegetarian version, and that had gone down really well. And so I think, I think this was the first one from, yeah, 2003.
Helen: So yeah, good work. Yeah, so that, that’s, that’s, that’s me. That’s me.
Chris: Awesome. Well, I guess we can move on to our next section now, which is the feedback section. So obviously we [00:33:00] did our previous podcast and we have had a couple of people reach out. A lot of people reach out with a lot of lovely comments about previous episode.
Chris: But I wanted to bring up a message that I received from my cousin. Yeah, who messaged me messaged me to say that she loves the podcast and is proud of us. She remembers our nana chowing down on the country cheese biscuits that I was talking about in the previous episode with a quarter inch helping of butter on top as well.
Chris: So clearly I had been put onto these early by the sound of it, which might be why I like them so much. So. Yeah, that, that just stood up an extra bit of memory for me, which was
Helen: a lovely happenstance. [00:34:00] That’s really nice. I so my, my mum reached out after the podcast and cause I mentioned her, the, the Christmas cake recipe page.
Helen: She sent me a picture of it, which is. I’ll put it up on the Instas. It’s just, it’s glorious. I’m surprised she could still read it. She could see that it was first made in, I think she, I think it’s a typo. She said 1998, but I think she meant 1988 because she said when I was five, which not surprising.
Helen: She, she showed me the original Moccha Square recipe as well. And also this whole thing of her writing down who she’s cooked for when in the back. And like she has things like, Well, actually, I really like this that she… Supper with Lin and Mark, Lin and Mark are her friends. Chili con carne and salad with bake…
Helen: Baked… What’s that? Baked polo? Ooh, what’s that? Baked something. Polenta? Baked Alaska! Oh wow, she went all out. Well done, Mum. And, and it was kind of lovely because her friend Lin also reached out and said… that she enjoyed the [00:35:00] pod and had it predicated her and my mum having quite a few discussions about their food and their food memories.
Helen: So, yeah, so really happy to hear that people are enjoying and and it’s it’s sparking some memories and, and things for you.
Chris: Yeah, I’m, I’m absolutely loving this little journey and I’m loving that people are able to have that. Like, this is. Pushing forward that discussion about food memories. And I love it.
Chris: I love it so much. It’s a lovely little thing. But yeah, that’s it episode for today, folks. We both hope that you’ve enjoyed what we put together. We’d love to hear your stories of the first cookbooks and your cooking journey to adulthood and the dirty pages within them. Please let us know by email at hello at the dirty page.com.
Helen: Yes, please. We definitely want to hear it’s been so lovely hearing a bit but more stories always good tag us on Instagram where we’re the dirty page pod [00:36:00] and you can find the posts of our first student, our first cookbooks or our first student cookbooks that we’ve discussed. So that was what grandma used to make.
Helen: Is that correct? Chris and beyond baking. All right. Yeah. And beyond baked beans. And so we can put up pictures of what we’ve done and the recipes we’ve been talking about. Our next episode’s theme will be date night where we’ll be talking about the books we use when we want to whip up something to impress somebody.
Helen: You were smirking at my use of the word whip, right?
Chris: Yep, yep. Yep. In the meantime, you can still find our website which is still in progress, but it’s looking pretty nice at the moment. It is excellent.
Helen: I should say Chris has done all the work on that and so should be applauded for that because I’ve been too bad to do anything.
Chris: No, you’ve been busy and it’s fine. It just means [00:37:00] that I, I might push published and see what happens.
Helen: Yeah, I
Chris: love it. I love it. But it’s up there and it’s… It has the details of the recipes we’ve talked about today and transcripts of the pod at dirtypagepod. com. And the page is still there. It hasn’t been taken down for being a porn site yet.
Chris: Yes.
Helen: More, more. Power to that. You, you can catch Chris’s weekly cooking adventures at twitch. tv slash ginger chris 86. And with that, I’ll say goodbye. And thanks very much for listening.
Chris: Thank you everyone. And we’ll catch you all soon. The dirty page is created, written and produced by Helen Maynard Casely and Chris Sims and is licensed under a creative commons attribution non commercial share alike.
Chris: 4. 0 International License, Idea, Logo, and Social Media handled by Helen Maynard-Casely, [00:38:00] Website and Editing handled by Chris Sims. If you would like to contact us, you can email us at hello at thedirtypage. com or follow us on Instagram at DirtyPagePod.